NEWS! NEWS! Delta Pearls won the 2007 William Rockhill Nelson Award in fiction. Margot Livesey, noted fiction writer and writer in residence at Emerson College, judged the fiction category. She stated that Jones' stories "had a hard-edged tenderness and a feeling for the past that I found both moving and engaging." Joe Miller won the non-fiction award and Wayne Miller (unrelated), the poetry awards. Delta Pearls , a collection of short fiction by From current review: Jones views life thorugh a positive lens--an unusual posture in our overly ironic, even cynical age. Through the course of the collection, we discern that this nonjudgmental view of life fits her interpretation of the mid-century period and the resilience of her characters--farm and small town folk, dealing with material losses and spiritual gains, while the Gret River rolls by. Catherine Browder "Tales from Missouri Bayou Country," New Letters 73.3, 159. (visit www.newletters.org.) From the cover: Delta Pearls is a compilation of "friend pictures, people pictures, fluttering about on the coldest days when the weather has just kicked up a cloudburst of snow." In a world where technological innovation and mass media are homogenizing American English, Judith Bader Jones preserves the beauty of the vernacular language distinctive to the Missouri Delta--that "mosquito infested backdrop of civilization"--and captures the heart of people in the process of loving and losing, being and becoming. --Editors. "The people of Delta Pearls are as real as members of your own family, as thoroughly fascinating as only real people can be. The author . . . gently reminds us that even the worst of us has redeeming qualities, even the best of us carries sins we'd prefer buried. Judith Bader Jones is a master storyteller and this is an eloquent collection of her work." --Jacqueline Guidry, author of The Year the Colored Sisters Came to Town "Delta Pearls is a quiet jewel, rich with a lyrical magic . . . these stories sink into you, rich, sweet, and true. They beguile your spirit and fill your heart." --Deborah Shouse, author, editor and motivational speaker "These characters meet life head on and cope in ways that resonate with the most fundamental fears and strengths in all of us." --Sally Whitney, author and editor of Best's Review Jones spent the majority of her childhood in Caruthersville and Cape Girardeau. She currently lives in Fairway, Kansas. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Art Times, Buffalo Spree, Potpourri, Short Stuff, The River Road Journal, the Kansas City Star, Kansas City Star Magazine, Sacred Waters (anthology edited by Maril Crabtree)and other publications. Her poem, "Missouri," won third place in the Star Magazine competition for state-poem and will be sent with the other winners to each Missouri legislator. Jones is a poetry editor of Kansas City Voices.